Death for the Death Penalty? Justice Scalia Predicts It's Coming

On the same week that Pope Francis calls for an end to the death penalty, a Supreme Court justice who backs it predicts its demise.

A 2001 view of the death chamber from the witness room at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio.

Photographer: Mike Simons/Getty Images
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Justice Antonin Scalia and the American Civil Liberties Union agree on this much: The death penalty’s days may be numbered.

Scalia, long a defender of capital punishment as a constitutional matter, said Tuesday he “wouldn’t be surprised” if his colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court abolished it, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal.